And because I have no pictures related to anything in this post, I will henceforth share random pics of my children.
This has been the hardest move-in we’ve ever had. I mean, the actual “moving in” of our stuff went great. When you’re only moving 15 minutes away (with no traffic), and you’re in no rush (since we had an entire week to move) while you shuttle most of your stuff around in bits and pieces, then it’s not so bad. (Until you start living in your new home and realize you really do need like, everything, and bits and pieces just don’t work until they’re whole again.) But stillllll, this keeps things low on the stress spectrum.
We also had lots of help—help from kind sturdy men as wives sacrificed their husbands for the morning, and help from Clayton’s sister who took charge of our little ducklings from the moment she woke up at our house. She paved the way for Clayton and I to pack, load, unload, and deal with the first day-and-a-half in our new house in peace. Well, more like in child-free chaos, which I guess could be called peaceful chaos? We owe her a shrine.
On other matters of positive feely things, we felt really good about moving to Fremont, and to this home and area. Even thinking about it now, I feel excited. I know it’s where we’re supposed to be. I know it so well that I should have been worried that I knew it so well right from the start, because that probably meant I’d really need the assurance later when things went awry—and awry they went. I have also been filled with gratitude, because to rent what we’re renting in an expensive place like the Bay Area, and for Clayton’s work to bus their employees so he doesn’t have to make the awful 60+ minute commute behind the wheel himself twice a day every day, is nothing short of blessings and miracles and everything that has contributed to this time in our lives. We are extremely grateful.
But I’ve learned that even a grateful heart can be cracked by anxiety and a heavy load.
The broken heater (thermostat)
It began with the heater. To even mention this makes me feel like a true Californian flinching away from the slightest chill, and yes, during all this time I was, and still am, grateful to live in a place where the highs are in the 50s and the lows don’t drop below the 30s in wintertime. I am a fully-certified wuss in the cold and have been such I hit puberty. (In case you’re wondering.) My toes, fingers, and ears are extremely vulnerable. I walk around with cold feet and hands even in the summertime. In winter, I warm my hands constantly before changing my littlest ones because I don’t want them to have nightmares about their mother’s freezing fingers coming for them in the night.
Anyway, the heater did not work. But the fan worked and was running the entire time we moved in. Once the heat of labor faded from our bodies, the chill set in. I had thought the fan was the heater, and quickly switched it for the heater in my shock, but it was a no-go. I was already wearing gloves and soon added a pair of fuzzy socks over my normal ones. When evening came, I huddled on the couch under blankets with Rina, our coughing Ariana, Brielle, and runny-nose Levi. I think the house was in the low 60s (it was for sure 61 when we went to bed that night). We were saved by the owner of the house, who the previous tenants did not inform about this non-functioning heater, and brought us several space heaters.
Turns out, it was the thermostat. Three days later, it’s been fixed and I am soooo grateful. I am a miserable, grumpy person when I’m cold, and I don’t really function, which is bad when you’ve just moved and half your life is lying around in boxes.
**Side note: Our Coughing Ariana**
The best way for children to play in a new place is to run around. Well, when you’ve got a cough, you just can’t. Ariana would run for two minutes and get a coughing fit, then have to sit on the couch with her blanket. She’s been coughing her lungs since Monday, and has been on the couch so often that she’s bored of the couch and movies and has firmly learned one of life’s saddest lessons: “Mom, being sick is the worst.” Thus, we have been largely confined to this house, instead of enjoying the many parks surrounding us or even going out for walks in the sun. No escape…
The non-flushing upstairs toilets
In a house with three toilets, the two upstairs weren’t flushing, one of which was running non-stop because the shut-off valve wasn’t working. Thankfully we had the third downstairs. This wasn’t much of a problem until I finally got my chilly butt off the couch to use this life-saving toilet, and asked Ariana if she had to go, but she said no cuz she’s a young child, and lo and behold when she got up off the couch five minutes later cuz her movie ended (bad timing, Mom), she found her bladder desperate with no other toilet to use and just let it go. (This is the first time she’s had an accident in the house in two years.) Thankfully, the toilets were fixed the next day.
**Timing**
The owner of this place has been great to respond to our concerns, which really gives us peace of mind. The trickiest part of all this was having to be home while the owner and repair guys came and went during the day. So we couldn’t do our second moving-truck run until after dinner, and weird things happened with dinner so we didn’t eat until 8:00pm and then kids went to bed and we did our moving and didn’t finish up until 1:00am. The second day, we wanted to register Ariana for school while Rina was there so we wouldn’t have to deal with three little kids sitting in an office for 45+ minutes being told over and over not to climb on the chairs. But we couldn’t go in the morning due to repairs, and we literally managed to finish Ari’s registration at the last possible second before needing to rush back home and take Rina to the airport. (This meant stress. There was much stress. Registering kids for school is stressful enough.)
The leaking washer hose
The owner suspects the previous tenants had had a plumbing thing replaced at one point and it was done incorrectly. So the washer hose was leaking. He kind of told us about this, but that was on the first day we moved stuff in before the big move-in, so I either thought it wasn’t a big deal or it was going to be fixed. Turns out, it was supposed to be fixed, but it was never mentioned again and everyone forgot. Thus, when Ariana had run out of clean pants (kids go through pants like crazy), I decided to do the laundry. Turns out the washer hose was still leaking, so we couldn’t do it. (And then the next morning, Brielle leaked on her bed. We didn’t potty train her before the move, but mark my words, her pull-up days are numbered!)
I came in from the garage to report the leak to Clayton and my hands were shaking. Then I burst into tears. I wasn’t angry, just desperate and broken and anxious. I was constantly anxious about everything, my brain rushing from need to need to every single thing I had to unpack and move and clean and deal with in this house, and to figuring out how to manage Ari’s new school and the less convenient ways they handle things.
The space heaters were tripping the breakers
I got through my little panic attack all right, but the next morning greeted me with a tripped breaker and a cold space heater. The cold did not help the emotions still crushed and gnarled inside of me, and I just could not get out of bed. I would snuggle my face into the warm blankets and war with myself about facing a day of discomfort and anxiety. I was starting to grow tired and numb and shut down into survival mode. I went to the store with Brielle and Levi after dropping Ariana off at school, and that went pretty well, then came home to repairmen waiting (unannounced) outside the house so they could fix the washer, the final valve on a toilet, and the faucet in the downstairs bathtub that was too tight to pull on or push off.
The lint-choked dryer
The washer was gross with grime and dust from years of no cleaning, so I cleaned it before using it. I knew I’d have to clean the dryer too, but severely underestimated how much it needed—so severely in fact, that I did a load of laundry in the newly fixed washer before looking at the dryer. Big mistake.
Apparently the renters of 5 years before us did not know how to clean a lint filter. Right off, I saw that the bottom of the door and the filter were covered in lint. I cleaned the outside of the dryer, cleaned the lint filter, cleaned the door...and looked into the lint trap. Oh my gosh, it was awful. Just a nest of lint overflowing through any opening you could find. I kindly asked Clayton if he could find a way to open the trap so we could get that crud out of there, but he couldn’t find a way, and my sweet amazing husband spent an hour trying other ways to do it. The vacuum could not suck it out, and we didn’t have any good sticks (not that they were guaranteed to defeat an army of lint). I’m still not sure what Clayton did, but in the end he displaced the army and we threw it away. Then we loaded the dryer with wet clothes and turned it on.
Cue the burning smell. Defeated.
Thus we sat, with a basket of wet clothes beside us (the laundromats were closed for the night), stunned that we had had an issue nearly every single day of being here. We’re rather terrified of what else we may find. Yet we’re still grateful to be here, for what we have, and that the owner has taken care of us. I’m just praying the unwanted surprises will take a break long enough for me to feel sane and normal again.
Can’t wait until we’re the ones owning a house and fixing all this stuff ourselves! …. sarcasm. Kinda. I do want to own a house. But not with the prices here. Erfphg.
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